


Curly Fries

by Besin



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Bad dates, F/M, Fluff, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Besin/pseuds/Besin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can't describe to Stiles how much he loved Claudia. It's not really possible.</p>
<p>Written for OhHelga on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curly Fries

Whenever Stiles asked about his mother, John would usually clam up. Not out of grief -- though there was a good helping of that -- but out of respect of her memory. John Stilinski wasn’t a man of words. He was a Sheriff, not a poet, and whenever Stiles asked him about Claudia he found himself scrambling for words that would convey just how amazing she was and still make sense.

He’d first met his wife in college, and the moment their eyes met he somehow knew that he was going to, if not marry her, spend a good chunk of his life in her company. And it wasn’t because of the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, or how she glanced shyly up at him from beneath her eyelashes. It was how she had taken those first few steps toward him, managing in the following ten seconds to successfully knock over a table of refreshments, shatter a perfectly good punch bowl, knock over three people, and stub her toe. Because if she had put so much focus into just taking those first few steps then there was no saying how fantastic (disastrous) their relationship could be.

Their first date was at a nice restaurant where she broke a chair and a waiter’s nose.

Date number two was in a park. She made sandwiches. John got food poisoning.

On their third date they decided to minimize casualties and ordered in. Halfway through a Hawaiian pizza they learned she had an allergy to pineapple.

Things did not look good until their fourth date. John had suggested a movie, but Claudia had a headache so they skipped the drive-in and instead settled into seats at the local diner, where she proceeded to buy three orders of curly fries and refused to share. He’d watched her with rapt attention as she’d practically swallowed the first serving in one bite. It wasn’t until she was halfway through her second handful that she seemed to recall John’s presence.

Claudia had looked up at him with a sheepish grin, then, dropping all but on fry back in the basket. She tapped the solitary potato slice against her chin. “You were going to see me and curly fries eventually,” she’d informed him smugly, not an apologetic bone in her body, before diving back into her “food.”

John could no longer remember if the, “I think I’m in love with you,” he’d half breathed, half laughed after her admission was intentional.

Her snarky, “Feeling’s mutual,” was so unabashedly unromantic they both couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

Instead of telling Stiles all this, though, John would simply tell him, “Your mother liked curly fries,” and left it at that. That memory was a bit too close to share, even with their son. Stiles wanted to know about his mother, yes, but he didn’t want to hear about her in a romantic light.

Eventually, as Stiles grew older, he asked less and less about Claudia. As teenagers tend to do, he was under the impression that he knew everything about his parents. Or maybe he was just distracted by school. Or, more likely, the dozens of supernatural creatures flocking to the Beacon, and thus to their tiny corner of California.

John didn’t want to tell anyone about how Claudia never hesitated to be herself in any sort of situation. How she didn’t see the point. Because if he said it out loud he’d never have to admit that Stiles was the spitting image of his mother in almost every way, inside and out, and admitted something like that out loud would make his son aware of how hopeless John really felt most of the time.

Stiles had enough on his place to think about without John stumbling for the right words to describe his wife. The way she laughed. The way she smiled. The way she took no for an answer until you turned you back, like when she painted on wall in the living room neon green when they first bought the house.

“So many people go on and on about how it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” she’d once told him. “Personally, I like to ask for both.”

Claudia refused to miss a single moment, and that was what made John fall in love with her.

 


End file.
